Amusing: January 2007 Archive Page

We thought that we would never see
A suit to compensate a tree.
A suit whose claim in tort is prest
Upon a mangled tree's behest;
A tree whose battered trunk was prest
Against a Chevy's crumpled crest;
A tree that faces each new day
With bark and limb in disarray;
A tree that may forever bear
A lasting need for tender care.
Flora lovers though we three,
We must uphold the court's decree. --J.H. Gillis, Judge --Fisher v. Lowe, 1999 (Letter of the Law)

Laws are weighed by fools like him.
He's gone too far out on this limb.

--[Hand-made Star Wars] (YouTube)

Very dorky, but in a totally awesome, very cool way.

"I was going to do gift bags, but I was going to do them right," Zwicky recalled. The party had a train theme, so she got sticks and bandannas and made "hobo packs" that included animal crackers and bubble solution.

Zwicky said that party was a turning point for her. She helped found Birthdays Without Pressure. --Parents turn against birthdays gone wild (Yahoo | AP (will expire))

Moms get sucked into planning and organizing overly complex birthday parties.

They get fed up with the competition among moms.

Moms get sucked into planning and organizing a movement to abolish overly complex birthday parties.

They get fed up with the competition among movements organized by moms who are fed up with competition among the organizations devoted to abolishing organizations that are competitive movements.

Moms get sucked into planning and organizing a movement against moms being sucked into planning and organizing movements devoted to... um... oh, forget it.

Six students, led by Engineering junior Tal Raviv, began a ceremonious walk outside Huntsman Hall at noon and processed east toward College Green, where they chanted phrases like "No more protests!" and "Down with activism!" -- Daily Pennsylvanian, "A Rally to End All Rallies

--toxickaty --Pac-Man Bathroom (Flickr | toxickaty)

Awesome.

The nefarious enemy of all that is good, the right paddle, has performed an act of agression against our sovereign right side by hitting the ball back in our direction.
If we act fast, we may be able to intercept the ball. It is aimed for directly above our paddle!

Move the great paddle up!
Hold the paddle steady!
Lower the paddle!

Score:

You: 0
Him: 0 --Pong: The Text-Based Game (Karber.net)

Hammer Dream (Jerz's Literacy Weblog)

This morning, I heard my daughter stirring in the next room, and I fell back asleep, knowing I only had a few minutes before I had to start getting her ready for preschool.

In those few minutes, I had a dream.

I was showing my daughter a hammer. It had a squarish head, like a metalworker's square hammer. It had a foam padded handle, that was decorated with a realistic-looking woodgrain pattern. I was trying to amuse my daughter by poking dents in the foam padding, pretending that I was strong enough to make the wood handle squish.

When my daughter realized the trick, I pulled off the foam sheath, revealing the real wood of the hammer under the woodgrain-printed foam covering. I did so in a dramatic fashion, expecting my daughter to laugh, which she did.

Then I noticed that the woodgrain of the hammer was actually a cheap vinyl covering, like you find on cheap office furniture (or the furniture I see all round me here in my basement study). When I peeled off some of that covering, I saw that the handle was actually made of that wood chips-and-sawdust amalgam that makes up the core of plywood.

I wondered how useful a hammer could be if its handle was made up of this stuff. But when I looked even closer, I saw that instead of wood chips, the handle was composed of intricate and detailed little decorative boxes, stacked like Russian dolls. As I watched, the boxes started unfolding, spilling out into geometric patterns like an Escher print. So much wood was involved that I couldn't imagine how it could have all fit into the space occupied by the handle.

The last thing I remember before I woke up was how I could somehow reproduce this event for the benefit of my students.

It was only an hour or so later, after I had driven my daughter to preschool (and was helping her write a page of letters) that it finally hit me... My daughter had given me a hammer for Christmas, and duh, Hammer is the name of one of the 3D design tools I've been using.

Tonight if I have a dream about geometric shapes pouring out of a blender, I'll let you know.